Policies on Informed consent and Code of Ethics

Informed consent is required for any research paper to be published in Archives of Clinical Hypertension (ACH) if that research involves human participants. Informed Consent policy states that a participant in research must be informed about all aspects of the trial and the research should be carried out only when the participant voluntarily confirms his or her willingness to participate in a particular clinical trial and significance of the research for advancement of medical knowledge and social welfare. The concept of informed consent is embedded in the principles of Nuremberg Code, The Declaration of Helsinki and The Belmont Report.

Informed consent is an inevitable requirement prior to every research involving human being as subjects for study. Policies regarding Informed Consent involves following postulates:

Human participants' names and other identifiers must be removed from all sections of the manuscript, including supplementary information. Informed consent letter must be attained for the publication of any other information that could lead to identification of a participant, such as clinical images and videos. In the methods section, the authors should include that informed consent to publish identifying information/images has been obtained. Please note that the use of coloured bars/shapes to obscure the eyes/facial region of study participants is NOT an acceptable means of anonymization.

Scientific Reports will not process manuscripts describing research that involves organs/tissues procured from prisoners. In addition to the requirements described above, authors of manuscripts describing human transplantation research must include a statement in their manuscript confirming that no organs/tissues were procured from prisoners. Authors should respect the privacy of organ donors and also provide details of the institutions through which all organs/tissues were obtained.

Research involving human subjects, human material, or human data, must have been performed in accordance with and must have been approved by an appropriate ethics committee. A statement detailing this, including the name of the ethics committee must appear in all manuscripts reporting such research. If a study has been granted an exemption from requiring ethics approval, this should also be detailed in the manuscript. Further information and documentation to support this should be made available to the Editor-In-Chief on request. Manuscripts may be rejected if the Editor-In-Chief considers that the research has not been carried out within an appropriate ethical framework.

Authors reporting the use of a new procedure or tool in a clinical setting, for example as a technical advance or case report, must give a clear justification in the manuscript for why the new procedure or tool was deemed more appropriate than usual clinical practice to meet the patient's clinical need. Such justification is not required if the new procedure is already approved for clinical use at the authors' institution. In case of a novel procedure, authors are expected to obtain ethics committee approval and informed patient consent for any experimental use of a novel procedure or tool.

For all research involving human subjects, informed consent to participate in the study should be obtained from participants or their parent/ legal guardian in case the participant is minor and a statement to this effect should appear in the manuscript

For all manuscripts that include details, images, or videos relating to individual participants, written informed consent for the publication of these must be obtained from the participants or their parent or legal guardian in case the participant is minor and a statement to this effect should appear in the manuscript.

All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an 'Acknowledgements' section. This section might include a person who provided purely technical help or writing assistance, or any sort of general support in performing research.

Archives of Clinical Hypertension (ACH) strictly follows COPE guidelines and in accordance to the guidelines requires written confirmation from all authors that they agree with any proposed changes in authorship of submitted manuscripts or published articles. The corresponding author should ensure that all authors confirm and agree with the proposed changes. Editor-In-Chief will not be responsible to resolve authorship disputes. The authorship of a published article can only be amended through publication of a request letter.